6 audio recording apps to fit your needs

August 5th, 2015

Regardless if you want to record a meeting, interview, classes or personal notes reminding you to take the trash out or to avoid a restaurant that served you withered salad leaves on the side, there definitely is a variety of audio recording apps to choose from. Although there are specialized audio recording devices, some prefer using apps developed for a mobile device of their choice instead, as sometimes it proves to be more convenient for notes on the spot. The purpose of this article is to look into some of them and identify their main features. The applications aren’t listed in accordance of any preferences.

The app is very easy to use, has a well laid out interface and also a feature to skip silence, which might be useful while saving memory card space. The quality of the audio is good, although compression seems to bring up background noises too much. Fortunately, there is an option to improve audio quality (from 8 kHz to 44.1 kHz) and make microphone adjustments. Moreover, in advanced options there is a feature to automatically pause the recording during phone calls. One of the drawbacks, on the other hand, is constant pop up ads at the bottom of the screen which can be removed permanently by paying €1.

This app offers two audio recording qualities: AAC (lower quality, saves space) and PCM (a very high quality, requires more space). Just as promised, the quality of the AAC recording was much lower: the voice wasn’t clear, there was a constant static noise, although there was absolutely no background noise while recording, but a 50s recording was only 97KB. The PCM recording was outstanding: the voice was very clear, no static noise, but a 50s recording was 4MB. In addition, there is an interesting option to edit the PCM quality files right there on the app. It is possible to increase volume, speed and audio gain, normalize the audio and remove noise.

Although this very easy to use app doesn’t have as much settings as the others might, it doesn’t mean that it’s any worse. The app has a very clear menu and in the options section audio quality can be changed from Lowest Quality (for those who want to save space) to Highest Quality (for those who have plenty of space and care more about the quality). To sum up, the audio quality with the setting Normal Quality was good, the audio files were recorded in mp3 format and it was easy to manage and share them.

This app comes in handy when there’s a need to record interviews via phone. In the free version, which is recommended to be tried out first as your device might not be compatible with the app, there are 3 recording settings: Record all, Ignore all and Ignore contact. The problem is that it might be quite uncomfortable to manually select which contact should be ignored (if there’s no need to record all of them). However, it is possible to go Pro on this app, which will enable a more comfortable selection of contacts you want to record. Of course, this comes with a price – the upgrade costs €5.59. Overall, the audio quality was good and the app was easy to use.

Similarly to the previous app, this one is used for recording calls, but is designed for iOS. This app works quite well, although the setting up the recording might seem quite complicated. This is solved by following the provided instructions. The audio quality is quite good and the recordings can be easily shared using several platforms.

The app has a very comfortable and easy to use interface. It offers three kinds of audio quality recording: 11025 Hz, 22050 Hz and 44100 Hz. Among other features, level of amplification and auto normalize the audio can be selected in the options menu. This app is available as a Pro version as well, which has such features as sending bigger audio files via e-mail (in the free version it’s up to 3MB), as well as the option to activate the recording by voice or timer. All in all, the audio quality was very good.

Requires: iOS 5.0 or later.

Compatibility: iPhone, iPad, iPod touch. Optimized for iPhone 5.

Size: 13.0 MB

Price: Free

Audio Sharing: e-mail, Dropbox.

Developer: Imesart S.a.r.l.

To sum up, these are only few out of many applications out there, therefore it should be kept in mind that they were listed here because all of them have somewhat differing features, but at the same time they also deliver in terms of quality.